To experience a high-tech social media strategy that’s incredibly high-touch, book a weekend at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami and see how it’s done perfectly.

Some sales professionals are still struggling with the idea of social media as a sales tool. They complain that Twitter and Facebook are full of senseless noise. They cling to the belief that only a phone call or a personal appointment builds relationships necessary to create sales. The personal touch requires a person, they argue.Yet success stories continue to pour in. Sales from friends we haven’t seen since high school. Referrals to their friends, and their children. Long distance connections to friends of friends of friends. None of which required a single ad, phone call or in-person meeting. Just people connecting to people by wall, tweet and text.

Can social media selling be high-tech and still high touch? Just ask the Mandarin Oriental in Miami.

The Mandarin does so many things perfectly. From the initial greeting to the charming room service, the high-touch personal experience is everywhere. So you can understand the challenge for a company whose strategy is service takes the leap into social media. It’s no small feat to translate perfect attention to people, by people, onto a Facebook fan page.The Mandarin makes it look easy. It starts by doing what they’ve always done: Paying attention to people. Consider the beginning of my experience.

After making my reservation, I visited the Mandarin’s Facebook page. It’s what customers do with their trusted brands: join the brand experience online. I didn’t expect much to come from my innocuous posting. Yet the Mandarin’s response was far from simple. It was social networking sales perfection. Surely, they could have just replied “We’re looking forward to your arrival!” But the Mandarin did more. They went beyond the auto-response into the relationship. They clicked on my name, viewed my profile, saw I lived in Boston where it’s freezing and buried in snow, and tailored a response that targeted my expectations for the weekend. Simply perfect!

That’s what sales is all about. As Peter Drucker said, the purpose of sales is to know the customer so well that your product or service fits them and sells itself. It took mere seconds for the Mandarin to click and learn all about me, then talk to me about me. Not talk about themselves, their hotel. They immersed the customer in their value proposition: Attention to the customer.

And yet, there was more to come.

After arriving at the Mandarin Friday night, I ordered room service. Within five minutes, my doorbell rang. Thinking it was amazingly fast response time, for any kitchen, I opened the door utterly surprised. It wasn’t dinner. it was something better: Chocolate sushi.

The man at the door explained it was a complimentary welcome gift from the manager. A nice gesture, but not necessarily one any hotel couldn’t duplicate. I seem to remember one chain offering warm cookies in the past. Once again, the Mandarin proved it’s no ordinary brand. Accompanying the chocolate sushi was an envelope. I almost didn’t open it, thinking it to be a form-printed “thanks for spending the weekend at our hotel.” I’m glad I did, because here’s what I found:

Talk about complementing the high-tech with high-touch!

The Mandarin did something very clever: It rewarded me for doing something I didn’t have to do: make a nice comment on their Facebook page. Rather than simply thank me at the front desk, they did something extra: They used a small gift - chocolate sushi - to complete the marketing circle. They completely integrated the experience – from online to offline – and proved that social networking can be a powerful component to a delightful customer experience.And, they benefitted tremendously. I’m writing this blog, spreading the positive experience to my sphere of influence. That’s the whole goal of social network selling. Getting people who trust your judgment to trust your favorite brands.

The Mandarin’s sphere of influence is surely expanding. And they've created a "fan for life" who will surely tell this story, over and over.That's social influence.Alas, the one thing the Mandarin could not control is the weather: It’s raining in Miami today. Yet I’m sitting here on the balcony, enjoying room service and smiling ear-to-ear about my experience with the Mandarin.

Makes you wish the Mandarin, who can deliver a delightful customer experience from online to offline, could control the weather too!

*** UPDATE:  The next morning, the Mandarin's PR department called me! They noticed that I'd written the blog, and wanted to share it across their social media sites. Of course, I agreed. Then they asked me to make a tiny change to the "ending" of the blog. They informed me they could indeed control the weather: They invited me to spend the day in the spa! Nice!!